


Reboot

by Capucine



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Gen, Mind Manipulation, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5461649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian is sure he was someone besides a drug addict couple's child before he lost his memory. But he just can't quite remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reboot

Damian was a child.

This much, he knew. He had been with the Fuhrmans for months now, had been told his lifestory (what they knew of it) and so on and so forth. He was an orphan. He was abandoned with a severe head injury. All signs pointed to druggie parents that had let him get injured and then stumbled on without noticing. Laurel and Frank Brady. Who had died in a car crash not long after he was discovered.

And he was a child, about eleven.

So...why exactly did he have these nightmares?

He could remember them in strange, hazy flashes—blue, black, red, pain and the thump of bodies being hit, the slice of a sword, the perfect weight of a sort of throwing blade—he remembered. Maybe.

He'd been told nightmares were normal.

But...he wasn't actually afraid during these nightmares. Not at all. He was...happy, he supposed. Happier than he was when he won a level on the Fuhrmans' game console (a Wii, a little old, but still funnish) or went full tilt on his bike down their street in the suburbs' big hill or won at chess in his club at school.

It didn't make sense. Violence should scare him, right? Real violence.

But then, violence seemed to be a common topic of discussion at school—from superheroes to movies to just rough-housing and comments of 'I'll kick his ass!'

Still. Something was off.

Damian had been told he missed his parents, and that was where the aching part in his soul came from. He'd been told that it was natural, that no matter what they did to him, they were still his parents and it was okay to miss them.

He didn't remember them when he looked at their pictures. They had his black hair, his mother his darker shade of skin, his father his green eyes—but he didn't feel anything. He tried to make himself feel something, but it didn't work, and he wondered if he was broken.

Still. He was a child. Why did he feel so happy fighting in his dreams?

And pain didn't bother him. He sliced open his palm while cutting vegetables, and hadn't even flinched. Mrs. Fuhrman had gasped, and quickly taken his hand, asking him questions he didn't know how to answer as he just stared at the blood pooling in his palm.

It was right. There should be blood.

But he couldn't say this to Mrs. Fuhrman. They would think he was crazy, and lock him away or put him on meds. 

Maybe he was crazy, though.

He felt craziest when he saw a tallish figure standing outside the playground at recess. The man had black hair, a bit past his ears, and blue eyes that seemed to just... _know_ him. They looked sad too, arms crossed over the man's chest, but if Damian made any sign of having seen him, he was quick to disappear.

His latest nightmare involved fighting a teen—a teen in red. He broke his nose. He woke up grinning and crying and trying to stifle the sound so his foster parents didn't come in.

He didn't know. He didn't understand.

He lived in _Ohio._ He couldn't possibly have a past different than what they said.

It was about the tenth time of seeing the stranger look at him when he made a connection—blue and black, but also the gray and black, and this was—this was--

Someone. Maybe it was Damian's _real_ father, he thought, as he watched discreetly from the jungle gym and tried to tamp down what felt like a sob trying to force its way up at the freakish turmoil in his chest.

He had a sudden, deep longing to _go home,_ but he didn't know where home was.

He wanted it, though. And the man who he thought, felt, was the man in blue and black, was the key to it.

But what if he wasn't? What if Damian made a fool of himself, and got himself taken away from the Fuhrmans? He liked them. They were nice, and they seemed to love him, or at least care about him. They didn't make him feel different from the other two kids in the home, who they'd adopted.

Still.

The next chance he got, he managed to climb the chain link fence and hide in wait for the man.

But the man didn't show. He didn't show ever again, actually, and Damian let it slowly, slowly slip from his mind. He had to have been wrong. It had to have been a mistake, from the head injury.

Because he stopped having those dreams shortly after.

And settled into his life as Damian Fuhrman. Chess Champion, Moody Teenager, Video Gamer—not whatever crazy thing those dreams had been.

They were just dreams. And they were gone now.

–

Dick watched from a much more hidden position than before, and said softly, into the comm, to Bruce, “I think he's finally accepted it.”

“Good,” Bruce responded gruffly, but Dick could tell it hurt him to have to put Damian here.

“If you're still sure this is the right thing to do...it's working,” Dick said, tone heavy, heart hurting. Yes, Damian had basically gone insane during the last battle—it was too much for an eleven year old. It was too much to expect him to be able to hold up under all the trauma he'd been through.

Mind-wiping him and sending him somewhere else felt cruel to Dick. But if it was helping Damian live a good life...

“It is.” It wasn't clear whether Bruce was agreeing with him or affirming that it was the right thing to do.

Dick sighed.

Maybe one day he would approach Damian again. Maybe they could be friends or something without him ever knowing.

But for now...he would keep his distance. Let Damian heal.

And hope to god this truly was the right choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the sadness. It just occurred to me one day, and I wanted to write it. Partially because, when I was psychotic, I had some faint suspicions of having really been a superhero or someone else, and being tricked. I mean, I was being tricked, but not the way I thought I was. :P


End file.
